In the 1980s I worked for a company that produced coffee-table books, some of them instructional, and the company took on a project to produce DIY books to be sold in Germany and France as well as the UK. No one seemed to have noticed that in Germany and France they wire and plumb differently. We hired a couple of consultants who got expenses-paid trips to London to explain things, and the more we talked, of course, the more differences became apparent.
Doors, for example. An English door is basically a rectangular thing with straight edges. A German door has rebates, often more than one, matching rebates in the frame: it keeps out draughts. The hinges are different too. I visited Germany at the time, and took in some art and some castles, but what seriously impressed me most were the doors. And the windows. They were streets ahead of anything I was familiar with in the UK. I was in Germany last week, which is why I have their doors on my mind.
A significant factor in the current UK housing crisis – quite apart from the lack of commitment over decades to building social housing, and the absurdity of ‘affordable’ housing – is the dilapidation of a large part of the UK housing stock. Our cars and laptops and coffee-shops and fashion match those of the rest of Europe, but the houses we live in are generally more decrepit and therefore more expensive to renovate or even keep in good repair (besides being insanely expensive in the first place).
For example, Buckingham Palace, comprising 755 rooms and lived in by the Queen for only a part of each year, now needs major refurbishment (new wiring, new plumbing) at a cost of £37 million. It hasn’t been redecorated since 1952. (What is the point of having £34 million in the bank – the Queen’s wealth, according to the 2015 Sunday Times Rich List – and not having fun painting the throne room pink and yellow, and polka dots in the state banqueting room?) Who has allowed the place to get into this condition – the government, the Royal family? And who now pays?
The Royal Collection (‘being the works of art held by the Queen in right of the Crown and held in trust for her successors and for the nation’) is large: its website has records for over 250,000 objects. A fraction of these have been seen by the public. The collection includes a couple of Titians, 27 works by Rubens, 33 by Van Dyck, 69 by Rembrandt, 237 by Canaletto and 567 by Leonardo Da Vinci (the latter including a drawing, c.1510, titled ‘A Cloudburst of Material Possessions’). As a contribution towards the £37 million, couldn’t some be sold? Does the Royal family (does anyone) really need over 230 works by Canaletto? These are not rhetorical questions. A little less Canaletto – I don’t think they’d even notice.
Monday, 28 November 2016
Friday, 11 November 2016
9/11 (2016)
A couple of posts ago I wrote: ‘The Brexit vote was won by the comment threads, the surrender to opinion. Not thinking.’ Now Trump …
I’m not constructing an argument here, I’m too lazy for that, but here are a few things in my head.
The net and social media and online journalism and radio phone-ins (a really cheap, cost-cutting way of doing broadcasting) have opened up all topics-for-debate to everyone with a keyboard. Everyone has their say, often on subjects they know little about. (I mentioned in that previous post that, bizarrely, I have an opinion to spout on the TV baking programme, even though I’ve never watched it. And there are certainly some writers I have an opinion about even though I haven’t properly read them.)
Not Cogito ergo sum, but: I have an opinion, therefore I am. (And I am not – yet – going to be shot for it. In some countries I would be. This one is still, I’m told, a ‘free country’.)
In the space where opinions are aired, they tend to coalesce, in a way that often involves a further degree of not-thinking. X (who may be a close and long-time friend, or a group of friends, or a critic or a politician or some other professional I have learned to trust) thinks this about Y (which might be globalisation or a particular issue in gender politics or the England cricket team selection or Z’s new novel), therefore I think this too.
A ridiculous BBC notion of balance – if publicly funded airtime is given to this argument, then there’s an obligation to give airtime to the counter-argument – encourages this free-for-all of opinion. It’s democracy, innit?
Some people do know whereof they are speaking. They used to be called, and often still are, ‘experts’. Skilled and qualified people who have devoted their whole working lives to learning about, and thinking deeply about, a particular subject (climate change, for example; or poetry).
The diminishment of automatic respect for expertise, certainly for an expertise that is built into the status-quo establishment way of thinking and dealing with things, has been healthy, also the loosening-up of deference. The world is not flat. Giving votes to women – and god, the struggle to achieve even that – was not a bad idea. The trampling of expertise by opinion is not healthy.
It’s in these my-opinion-is-as-good-as-yours democracies that the votes for (1) Brexit and (2) Trump have been counted. It’s in this my-opinion-is-as-good-as-yours atmosphere that the Brexit campaigns were conducted, utterly lousily, utterly condescendingly, without trust in the intelligence of their constituencies, by both sides. Rhetoric. Fear. Money the only god. Instant opinion. Re-tweet.
And the experts? The experts the media treated us to, day after day, were not the ones who have devoted their lives to the issues but the ones who claim to know about how the issues play into politics. And they got it wrong, every time: on Corbyn’s election as Labour Party leader, on the last UK election, on Brexit, on the US election, on who would win the last Ashes series (cricket) between England and Australia, and a whole lot more. They consistently get it wrong, and they are paid to be wrong. The message then being: experts, huh. Climate change, huh.
The proposition in the last post, by the way, that the Palace of Westminster – home to the Houses of Parliament, whose decaying, asbestos-ridden fabric will cost around £4 billion to repair – might be demolished and rebuilt in the Midlands, and that on the present site there might be new social housing – was meant completely seriously. No irony. It’s too late for irony. Why should Trump be the only one who can go out of the box and still win? What box?
I’m not constructing an argument here, I’m too lazy for that, but here are a few things in my head.
The net and social media and online journalism and radio phone-ins (a really cheap, cost-cutting way of doing broadcasting) have opened up all topics-for-debate to everyone with a keyboard. Everyone has their say, often on subjects they know little about. (I mentioned in that previous post that, bizarrely, I have an opinion to spout on the TV baking programme, even though I’ve never watched it. And there are certainly some writers I have an opinion about even though I haven’t properly read them.)
Not Cogito ergo sum, but: I have an opinion, therefore I am. (And I am not – yet – going to be shot for it. In some countries I would be. This one is still, I’m told, a ‘free country’.)
In the space where opinions are aired, they tend to coalesce, in a way that often involves a further degree of not-thinking. X (who may be a close and long-time friend, or a group of friends, or a critic or a politician or some other professional I have learned to trust) thinks this about Y (which might be globalisation or a particular issue in gender politics or the England cricket team selection or Z’s new novel), therefore I think this too.
A ridiculous BBC notion of balance – if publicly funded airtime is given to this argument, then there’s an obligation to give airtime to the counter-argument – encourages this free-for-all of opinion. It’s democracy, innit?
Some people do know whereof they are speaking. They used to be called, and often still are, ‘experts’. Skilled and qualified people who have devoted their whole working lives to learning about, and thinking deeply about, a particular subject (climate change, for example; or poetry).
The diminishment of automatic respect for expertise, certainly for an expertise that is built into the status-quo establishment way of thinking and dealing with things, has been healthy, also the loosening-up of deference. The world is not flat. Giving votes to women – and god, the struggle to achieve even that – was not a bad idea. The trampling of expertise by opinion is not healthy.
It’s in these my-opinion-is-as-good-as-yours democracies that the votes for (1) Brexit and (2) Trump have been counted. It’s in this my-opinion-is-as-good-as-yours atmosphere that the Brexit campaigns were conducted, utterly lousily, utterly condescendingly, without trust in the intelligence of their constituencies, by both sides. Rhetoric. Fear. Money the only god. Instant opinion. Re-tweet.
And the experts? The experts the media treated us to, day after day, were not the ones who have devoted their lives to the issues but the ones who claim to know about how the issues play into politics. And they got it wrong, every time: on Corbyn’s election as Labour Party leader, on the last UK election, on Brexit, on the US election, on who would win the last Ashes series (cricket) between England and Australia, and a whole lot more. They consistently get it wrong, and they are paid to be wrong. The message then being: experts, huh. Climate change, huh.
The proposition in the last post, by the way, that the Palace of Westminster – home to the Houses of Parliament, whose decaying, asbestos-ridden fabric will cost around £4 billion to repair – might be demolished and rebuilt in the Midlands, and that on the present site there might be new social housing – was meant completely seriously. No irony. It’s too late for irony. Why should Trump be the only one who can go out of the box and still win? What box?
Thursday, 10 November 2016
Parliament: a health warning
According to the government’s Health & Safety Executive, ‘Asbestos is the biggest occupational disease risk to construction workers. HSE commissioned research estimates it was responsible for the death of over 2,500 construction workers in 2005 – more than two-thirds of cancer deaths in the industry.’
The Houses of Parliament are falling apart, and they are riddled with asbestos. This is from the official website: ‘There has been significant under-investment in the Palace [of Westminster] for decades. Parts of the building, including the House of Commons chamber, were renovated following bomb damage during the Second World War. Other areas have not undergone appropriate renovation since the Palace was built in the mid-1800s. Currently, the speed at which the work can be carried out is slower than the rate at which the building is deteriorating, therefore the backlog of essential repairs, and in turn the risk of system failure, is growing significantly over time. These challenges are compounded by the presence of asbestos throughout the building and fitting work around sittings of Parliament. The current piecemeal approach of repairing only those areas at highest risk of failure to ensure the work of Parliament remains uninterrupted is no longer sustainable and we have now reached the stage where a substantial renovation is needed.’
And this is from a Guardian report dated September this year: ‘Plans to move MPs and peers out of parliament for six years of repairs to the Palace of Westminster could end up costing more than £4bn, as a report on the restoration works put no firm price tag on the project. Tina Stowell, who co-leads the joint committee on the Palace of Westminster, said the restoration and repair works were essential to mitigate the risk of parliament burning down or suffering a catastrophic systems failure.’
The UK is falling apart. There is increasing wealth inequality: ‘The poorest fifth of society have only 8% of the total income, whereas the top fifth have 40%.’ There are divisions between between old and young (75% of 18–24-year-olds voted remain in the Brexit vote) and along other faultlines (race, gender), and between London and the regions (a major element of the Brexit vote was protest by those who felt neglected by the ‘metropolitan elite’).
It’s possible that the current UK political system is already suffering ‘a catastrophic systems failure’. A divided UK is currently ruled by a divided government that came into power committed to staying in Europe and that is now committed to exiting Europe, that rejects the High Court’s judgement that the terms of Brexit should be debated in Parliament, that holds a small majority in the Commons and yet faces an Opposition even more divided than itself. It’s possible that more than ‘substantial renovation’ is needed.
Knock the Palace of Westminster down. Rebuild in the Midlands, out of London. On the present site, build social housing for those teachers, nurses, social and transport workers and others who keep this city running but who are priced out of the property market. I’d vote for this.
(Not for the total irrelevance that is the Garden Bridge, on which around £40 million public money has already been spent. To go ahead with this now would be at least as provocative as Marie Antoinette’s ‘Let them eat cake.')
Monday, 7 November 2016
On consumer protection
The Trade Descriptions Act 1968 ‘prevents manufacturers, retailers or service industry providers from misleading customers as to what they are spending their money on’ (Wiki).
So, if I buy something online and it turns out to be not as described, or the wrong size, or there’s a bit missing or malfunctioning, I can cancel the deal and get my money back.
Sometimes, of course, I just change my mind (it’s what minds are for).
The UK version of parliamentary democracy also offers a form of consumer protection. If I don’t like how the party in government is acting, I have the opportunity – every five years at least – to vote for a different party.
Brexit does not work like this. And irrespective of whether you voted in the referendum to leave or remain in the EU, there is this godawful mess to be dealt with: in the last General Election the UK voted into power a party that wanted the UK to stay in the EU, and is now governed by a party committed to getting out of the EU.
The 2015 Tory manifesto of course played it both ways. Here’s the relevant passage, page 74: ‘We are clear about what we want from Europe. We say: yes to the Single Market. Yes to turbo-charging free trade. Yes to working together where we are stronger together than alone. Yes to a family of nation states, all part of a European Union – but whose interests, crucially, are guaranteed whether inside the Euro or out. No to ‘ever closer union.’ No to a constant flow of power to Brussels. No to unnecessary interference. And no, of course, to the Euro, to participation in Eurozone bail-outs or notions like a European Army. It will be a fundamental principle of a future Conservative Government that membership of the European Union depends on the consent of the British people – and in recent years that consent has worn wafer-thin. That’s why, after the election, we will negotiate a new settlement for Britain in Europe, and then ask the British people whether they want to stay in the EU on this reformed basis or leave. David Cameron has committed that he will only lead a government that offers an in-out referendum. We will hold that in-out referendum before the end of 2017 and respect the outcome.’
There are no arguments, there is no reasoning, here. ‘We say: yes to the Single Market’. No explanation of what that is. Capital letters, as if it’s a thing – like God, say, or Nature – that can’t be changed, a thing that’s just there. Wiki takes the capital letters off, because it is not a given, it’s something that has to be worked for, and in this case has been, for decades: ‘A single market allows for people, goods, services and capital to move around a union as freely as they do within a single country – instead of being obstructed by national borders and barriers as they were in the past. Citizens can study, live, shop, work and retire in any member state. Consumers enjoy a vast array of products from all member states and businesses have unrestricted access to more consumers.’
Freedom of movement of goods and services and capital without freedom of movement of people is not a single market. We know this; the Tories know it, and knew it when they constructed that manifesto, and said yes to the single market. And now, after being elected by the UK democratic process on the basis of saying yes to it, they are saying no to it.
The preceding sentence is hideous: ‘what we want from Europe’. ‘Europe’ is some other place entirely from which we demand things, even expect them as our right? Maybe history has got it all wrong, maybe the UK (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and god knows that was hard to achieve, over centuries) really is some free-floating little continent all to itself.
The ‘will of the people’ – in this case 52% against 48% – is a fickle thing. On the whole, this system we live under allows for this: we can change our minds, we are protected against our own impulse-buying habits. In the case of Brexit we have no protection. And we’ve been sold a pup.
So, if I buy something online and it turns out to be not as described, or the wrong size, or there’s a bit missing or malfunctioning, I can cancel the deal and get my money back.
Sometimes, of course, I just change my mind (it’s what minds are for).
The UK version of parliamentary democracy also offers a form of consumer protection. If I don’t like how the party in government is acting, I have the opportunity – every five years at least – to vote for a different party.
Brexit does not work like this. And irrespective of whether you voted in the referendum to leave or remain in the EU, there is this godawful mess to be dealt with: in the last General Election the UK voted into power a party that wanted the UK to stay in the EU, and is now governed by a party committed to getting out of the EU.
The 2015 Tory manifesto of course played it both ways. Here’s the relevant passage, page 74: ‘We are clear about what we want from Europe. We say: yes to the Single Market. Yes to turbo-charging free trade. Yes to working together where we are stronger together than alone. Yes to a family of nation states, all part of a European Union – but whose interests, crucially, are guaranteed whether inside the Euro or out. No to ‘ever closer union.’ No to a constant flow of power to Brussels. No to unnecessary interference. And no, of course, to the Euro, to participation in Eurozone bail-outs or notions like a European Army. It will be a fundamental principle of a future Conservative Government that membership of the European Union depends on the consent of the British people – and in recent years that consent has worn wafer-thin. That’s why, after the election, we will negotiate a new settlement for Britain in Europe, and then ask the British people whether they want to stay in the EU on this reformed basis or leave. David Cameron has committed that he will only lead a government that offers an in-out referendum. We will hold that in-out referendum before the end of 2017 and respect the outcome.’
There are no arguments, there is no reasoning, here. ‘We say: yes to the Single Market’. No explanation of what that is. Capital letters, as if it’s a thing – like God, say, or Nature – that can’t be changed, a thing that’s just there. Wiki takes the capital letters off, because it is not a given, it’s something that has to be worked for, and in this case has been, for decades: ‘A single market allows for people, goods, services and capital to move around a union as freely as they do within a single country – instead of being obstructed by national borders and barriers as they were in the past. Citizens can study, live, shop, work and retire in any member state. Consumers enjoy a vast array of products from all member states and businesses have unrestricted access to more consumers.’
Freedom of movement of goods and services and capital without freedom of movement of people is not a single market. We know this; the Tories know it, and knew it when they constructed that manifesto, and said yes to the single market. And now, after being elected by the UK democratic process on the basis of saying yes to it, they are saying no to it.
The preceding sentence is hideous: ‘what we want from Europe’. ‘Europe’ is some other place entirely from which we demand things, even expect them as our right? Maybe history has got it all wrong, maybe the UK (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and god knows that was hard to achieve, over centuries) really is some free-floating little continent all to itself.
The ‘will of the people’ – in this case 52% against 48% – is a fickle thing. On the whole, this system we live under allows for this: we can change our minds, we are protected against our own impulse-buying habits. In the case of Brexit we have no protection. And we’ve been sold a pup.
Tuesday, 1 November 2016
What do you think?
Very often, I don’t know. Je ne sais pas. Often, Je ne comprends pas.
About the Clinton emails, for example, I haven’t been following. I don’t know much about Hillary Clinton except that certain people I respect who do know about her have no respect for her, despise her, but on the other hand … This binary thing. Of course I have an opinion (first definition in my online dictionary: ‘a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge’) about Clinton, but that’s not the same thing as thinking. I have an opinion about the silly things, about the way Clinton is so often called Hillary, while Trump is Trump. I have an opinion about the way this whole thing is played out on the media that reaches me. I have an opinion about the way meatballs should be cooked (poached, since you ask; no need to pan-fry them first).
I’ve recently come out of Facebook, or maybe just ducked very low, because of this: it’s a medium that excites immediate opinionating, and I was doing that, about things I hadn’t thought through, and I was getting into binary arguments I shouldn’t have, and was being liked or disliked, but a lot less than I was disliking myself for getting into this mess.
Radio phone-ins: some are very good, they filter. The comment threads on news sites are moderated but less filtering, they are more a free-for-all, which is their point? Current online Guardian offers me the opportunity to opinionate about the US election, Bake-Off, Uber, Russian involvement in Syria, England cricket team selection and something titled ‘The end of cleavage’. I could, if I could be bothered, comment on all, not least the cricket thing, which is a part of my life, and the Bake-Off thing, which I’ve never watched but which I still, oddly, find myself opinionated by, but why?
There is news and there is news, the latter being people’s opinions (those party promises, all of them: ‘We will listen’) which are scrunched, analysed by well-paid people and then themselves become the news, and then policy, and then round we go again, and can someone get a grip? I’m thinking, enlightened despotism. Because this way of democracy clearly isn’t working (and not just because I disagree with some of its decisions).
The Brexit vote was won by the comment threads, the surrender to opinion. Not thinking.
No, I don’t distrust ‘the people’. Among them, the 27.8% of the electorate, well over a quarter, who didn’t vote in the referendum. The 33.9% of the electorate, over a third, who didn’t vote in the last general election. More people didn’t vote at all than voted for any particular party. I do trust; see last post. I trust in a third of the electorate’s disaffection from political rhetoric.
About the Clinton emails, for example, I haven’t been following. I don’t know much about Hillary Clinton except that certain people I respect who do know about her have no respect for her, despise her, but on the other hand … This binary thing. Of course I have an opinion (first definition in my online dictionary: ‘a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge’) about Clinton, but that’s not the same thing as thinking. I have an opinion about the silly things, about the way Clinton is so often called Hillary, while Trump is Trump. I have an opinion about the way this whole thing is played out on the media that reaches me. I have an opinion about the way meatballs should be cooked (poached, since you ask; no need to pan-fry them first).
I’ve recently come out of Facebook, or maybe just ducked very low, because of this: it’s a medium that excites immediate opinionating, and I was doing that, about things I hadn’t thought through, and I was getting into binary arguments I shouldn’t have, and was being liked or disliked, but a lot less than I was disliking myself for getting into this mess.
Radio phone-ins: some are very good, they filter. The comment threads on news sites are moderated but less filtering, they are more a free-for-all, which is their point? Current online Guardian offers me the opportunity to opinionate about the US election, Bake-Off, Uber, Russian involvement in Syria, England cricket team selection and something titled ‘The end of cleavage’. I could, if I could be bothered, comment on all, not least the cricket thing, which is a part of my life, and the Bake-Off thing, which I’ve never watched but which I still, oddly, find myself opinionated by, but why?
There is news and there is news, the latter being people’s opinions (those party promises, all of them: ‘We will listen’) which are scrunched, analysed by well-paid people and then themselves become the news, and then policy, and then round we go again, and can someone get a grip? I’m thinking, enlightened despotism. Because this way of democracy clearly isn’t working (and not just because I disagree with some of its decisions).
The Brexit vote was won by the comment threads, the surrender to opinion. Not thinking.
No, I don’t distrust ‘the people’. Among them, the 27.8% of the electorate, well over a quarter, who didn’t vote in the referendum. The 33.9% of the electorate, over a third, who didn’t vote in the last general election. More people didn’t vote at all than voted for any particular party. I do trust; see last post. I trust in a third of the electorate’s disaffection from political rhetoric.
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